


here is enough

by pensrcool



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF, Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Alternate Universes, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2017-09-28
Packaged: 2019-01-06 13:02:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12211830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pensrcool/pseuds/pensrcool
Summary: "If Rooster Teeth didn't exist, do you think we'd find each other eventually?"





	here is enough

**Author's Note:**

> remember when gavin asked michael if they'd find each other without rt and michael immediately said no and gavin followed up with "you don't think there'd be an emptiness in your heart you'd have to quell?"
> 
> me too.

There's a universe, somewhere off where other universes are, where Gavin never meets Michael. He doesn't know this, of course. There's no way he could. That Gavin goes through life breezily, is never particularly unhappy. He has friends, he has talents, he has people he flirts with for a night and doesn't keep in touch with. He doesn't ache for a missing half. He lives, he dies, he never meets Michael. 

There's another world where Gavin has quietly wanted Michael Jones since he was old enough to read the name on his forearm, where every once in awhile he spends a few futile hours trying to pick his Michael Jones out of the thousands he finds online. He does find him, eventually, runs straight into him in an airport and knocks him over, and doesn't know Michael Jones is his Michael Jones until Gavin offers his arm to help him up and Michael, _his_ Michael’s eyes alight on the name and he starts cursing and laughing in equal measure. Later, Gavin laughs at how all his purposeful searching couldn't beat the effectiveness of his clumsiness, and a happiness he didn't know he was missing blooms. 

There's a universe where they're both soaked in blood and gunpowder to their bones, recognize a kindred destructiveness in their beings. Gavin’s the nice, Michael’s the dynamite. But really, Gavin’s the first spark that's just the suggestion of a bad idea, Michael’s the fuel, logs and gasoline and a headstrong will, and their world is theirs to burn. They know, somewhere, that they'll burn with it. They know, somewhere, they're each other's ends. But until then, they're Michael and Gavin. They're a hundred miles an hour on the freeway and laughs that spell out a terrifying kind of freedom. 

They're guests at Meg and Lindsay’s wedding, each practically family to the side of the couple they know. They’re happy for how happy their respective friend is, smiles never far from their faces. They’re total strangers who happen to get sat at the same table, but it only takes a moment for them to launch into a conversation that will make them, them. Meg stops by and does a double take in the middle of Michael making a hand gesture that's meant to be a shrimp trying to have sex. She grins. She points at Michael. 

“Meg.” 

She points at Gavin. 

“Lindsay.”

She pats both of their shoulders and then leaves, presumably off to point out more comparisons between her perfect marriage and ones to come.

Magic thrums under Gavin’s skin, comes out in small bursts when he's happy. It trails from him in the smell of woodsmoke, in coffee cups that are never cold. But mostly it's contained, channeled straight from him to his wand, a few low murmurs over a pot as he stirs in frog eyes. 

The only thing that thrums under Michael’s skin is blood. But when he looks at Gavin he changes the air, has a laugh that commands Gavin’s heart to stutter out a faster beat, turns curses into something tender in a way Gavin never quite manages to figure out. And Gavin wonders how Michael’s sort of magic can be so much greater, can change Gavin in an instant, yet not work with wands.

Gavin helps him rebuild, in one (in more than one). Michael hates how flippant Gavin is, hates the curve of his smile, hates his stupid fucking happiness. That's what he tells Gavin, at least. Later, when his jaw is clenched and his fists are curled, he tells Gavin that he hates what it reminds him of. Gavin doesn't know what to say, so for once, he doesn't. He invades Michael’s space slowly, watches as shoulders droop and hands relax and Michael wipes away what could be tears, and doesn't say anything. He means to dart in and out for a hug, but Michael wraps arms around him and just holds, and Gavin can do that. Gavin ends up doing that a lot. 

In another, Michael’s standing at a plane gate feeling a vague sort of nervous, knowing whatever he's on the edge of, it's something important. He watches his phone flood with messages as Gavin lands, tries to approximate Gavin’s probable expressions in his head, made up of profile pictures and cross referenced with their shitty quality Skype calls. He tries to imagine what Gavin will look like when they see each other in person for the first time. Happy, he's hoping. 

When Gavin catches sight of him, he smiles and yells in a way that exceeds Michael’s expectations. He's more than happy, and Michael’s cataloging every new thing he knows about Gavin: how he has a couple of inches on Michael that aren't really noticeable until they're incredibly close to each other, how the hair on his arms is blond and thicker than he expected, how the pang Michael feels over Gavin not physically being in his life the last few years gets even stronger. 

Visa paperwork sucks about as much as they expected it to, but living together somehow manages to be nicer than they thought it would be. They both knew some things would be good--waking up next to each other, being separated by inches rather than hours--but there’s unexpected charm in the way their mornings sync up, in the way their apartment transforms into a space that reflects the both of them in equal measure, becomes a space that feels more like home than a basement in New Jersey or a bedroom in London did. 

“Michael,” Gavin says in one, already with half a grin, “Michael, do you think we’re soulmates? If Rooster Teeth didn't exist, do you think we'd find each other eventually? Without all this?”

He gestures to the computers, to the room, to their friends. Michael snorts. 

“No.”

“You don't think there'd be an emptiness in your heart you'd have to quell?”

Michael makes a face at him.

“No. What are we, some fucking Austen novel?”

“Did she write about soulmates?”

“I don't know, she wrote about romance and shit. Mr. Darcy.”

“Pride and Prejudice!”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Gavin leans back in his chair, is quiet for a moment.

“Really though, you think this is it?”

“Think what is it?”

“If we hadn't met here, you don't think something would have made us meet somewhere else?”

“If we hadn't met here, we’d probably be living three thousand miles apart. So no.”

He gives Gavin an amused smile. 

“What, is that what you believe? That without ever knowing each other existed we’d _magically_ end up in each other’s circles?”

Gavin ducks his head, embarrassed. 

“No, I just… we’d be bois, wouldn't we?”

“If we never met?”

“Never mind.”

Michael’s not getting it, and Gavin doesn't know how to say it in a way where he will, can’t quite grasp how to explain to Michael that he can't wrap his head around an existence where they occur permanently isolated from one another. He doesn't know how to talk about how the gaps Michael would leave with his absence are unfathomable. Gavin was joking about the soulmate thing, he doesn’t really believe that. He just thinks all versions of him are used to a life with Michael in it. 

He’s wrong. There are Gavins who never meet a Michael and spend no time pining over this mystical missing piece. But for every one of those worlds, there’s one, two, ten, twenty, where Michael is integral to Gavin’s life, a constant so solid and present that Gavin can’t help but be aware of how _there_ he is, how quickly he became not only someone, but something. Every single one of them a world where Gavin scoffs at the words _soulmates_ and _higher powers_ and _destiny_ , but still believes that all other hims experience a twist in fate that brings them to Michael. How could they not? How could any him live on the same planet as a Michael and not find him, not ever have Michael casually slip into place beside them? They’re not together in every one, not by a long shot, but in every one they are, Gavin wholeheartedly believes all his duplicates find Michael. That isn’t true, but a thousand of him believe it, which counts for something. Which makes it ring a little less false. 

It’s not that Gavin thinks he’s fundamentally incomplete without Michael. It’s that it’s impossible for him to look at his life and try to imagine anyone filling the spaces Michael effortlessly fit into, the ones Gavin didn’t know existed until Michael was already in them. They weren’t two pieces automatically fitting together, not really. It’s more like erosion, Gavin thinks. Time and drinks and jokes wearing away at the both of them until their shapes were different from what they started as, inversions of each other that match up perfectly. But that’s probably too Austen-y.

“Hey.”

Gavin looks up, sees Michael looking fond.

“There are like two million things that had to go right for us to meet. If you didn’t live in the same shitty village as the only slow motion photographer in England, we wouldn’t meet. If I didn’t buy a camera that happened to also take video, we wouldn’t meet. But we did. And that’s pretty great, Gav. It’s pretty great.”

Gavin thinks about their effortless transition from strangers to inseparable. He thinks about the way Michael smiles when he’s laughing and shaking his head at something Gavin’s done, about Michael’s content tone when he says _Gavvers_ and _Gav_ and _boi_ and how it makes Gavin feel a little content too. He thinks about how many things he doesn’t have time to think about because he could spend hours cataloguing the good bits of being Michael’s friend.

Michael’s right. It’s pretty great.


End file.
